Policymakers Tackling Teenage Steroid Abuse

Renewed concerns about the role of performance-enhancing drugs in
professional sports have prompted national and state policymakers to
focus on the problem of steroid abuse by teenagers.

This abuse isn’t a new problem in athletics, but the issue has
recently made its way back into the national consciousness.

President Bush mentioned steroids in his January State of the Union
speech, warning that youngsters model the behavior of professional
athletes and urging pro-sports leagues to get tough on users.

In California and Florida, state lawmakers alarmed by the unfolding
doping scandal in professional baseball introduced legislation this
year that would require schools to randomly test student athletes for
steroid use.

Experts said those actions were well-timed.

Last month, the U.S. Senate held hearings looking into the use of
steroids in professional baseball after the personal trainer of San
Francisco Giants star Barry Bonds was indicted on charges of selling
performance-enhancing drugs out of a Bay-area lab.

The last time the nation saw an upswing in steroid use among young
people was 1998—the year Mark McGuire broke professional
baseball’s single season home run record.

The muscular slugger later admitted to using a steroid derivative
called androstenedione, but medical researchers and other experts said
the only message many adolescents took away from the controversy was
that steroids equal glory.

"Kids are going to emulate and admire what they see on a daily
basis," said Peter Roby, the executive director of the Center for the
Study of Sport in Society, based at Northeastern University in
Boston.

Today’s young athletes are growing up in a culture where
athletic ability is an ever-more- valuable commodity, Mr. Roby said.
"If you can find ways to enhance your performance," he said, "you are
rewarded, so it’s a risk-reward proposition."

‘Start Paying Attention’

An annual study of 50,000 students led by researcher Lloyd D.
Johnston showed that among 8th grade boys, steroid use jumped from 1.2
percent in 1998 to 1.7 percent in 1999 and 2000. And usage among boys
in the 12th grade peaked at 3.8 percent in 2001 and 2002, up from 2.8
percent in 1998.

"In the years immediately following Mark McGuire’s record,
[young people’s] perception of the dangers of steroid use
declined appreciably—all they could see was that he looked
healthy and he was playing great," said Mr. Johnston, a professor at
the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, in
Ann Arbor.

Mr. Johnston points out that the upward trend in usage finally
showed a slight reversal last year.

Still, among the boys surveyed by Johnston’s group in 2003,
the drugs were being used by 1.8 percent of 8th graders, 2.3 percent of
10th graders, and 3.2 percent of seniors.

"Teens are ‘juicing’ just like many of the sports
figures they so want to emulate—and coaches, parents, lawmakers,
and students need to wake up and start paying attention," California
state Sen. Jackie Speier said in a March 25 statement.

Ms. Speier, a Democrat, has proposed mandating random steroid
testing in schools, banning the sale of legal performance-enhancing
drugs such as creatine and androstenedione to minors, and requiring
school coaches to receive training on the dangers of the
drugs.

‘Ugly Possibility’

While steroids can enhance athletic performance, build muscle, and
speed up recovery time, there are a host of medical reasons for
teenagers to steer clear of the drugs.

Anabolic steroids are synthetic compounds that mimic the effects of
the male sex hormone testosterone. According to the National Institute
of Drug Abuse, use of such drugs by adolescents can halt bone growth
and damage the heart, kidneys, and liver.

In males, steroids override the body’s natural production of
testosterone and can lead to impotence, shrunken testicles, and breast
enlargement. Women using the drugs may experience irregular menstrual
periods, growth of body hair and loss of scalp hair, a deepened voice,
and reduced breast size.

Often, though, the outward signs of steroid abuse can be subtle
enough to escape even the trained eye.

Dr. Stephen G. Rice, a pediatrician at Jersey Shore University
Medical Center in Neptune, N.J., who specializes in sports medicine,
gives physicals to some 2,000 high school athletes a year. Even so, he
can’t recall having recently tagged any of those adolescents as
steroid users.

"It’s harder than you think to identify steroid use unless
you’re really, really, really looking hard," Dr. Rice said. "That
said, I can’t imagine that if I were a coach, seeing a kid day in
and day out and knowing what normal development looks like, …
that I wouldn’t see it.

"And that," he added, "raises the very ugly possibility that coaches
don’t want to see it."

The question for many schools and districts is how best to deter
students from using steroids. Testing for such drugs, even randomly, is
expensive, and schools rarely undertake the endeavor.

The 35,000-student Paradise Valley Unified School District in
Phoenix, for example, spends $21,000 annually on the testing, at a cost
of $79 per student. Since 1990, the district has conducted urine
testing in all five of its high schools between one and four times a
month.

However, school officials said they rarely find a student who tests
positive for steroid use. They believe the testing serves as a strong
deterrent.

Even without testing, some athletic directors and coaches say
they’re well aware there’s a problem with the use of
performance- enhancing substances.

Although Barry Hovrla, the athletic director at the 1,200-student
Lowell Senior High School in Lowell, Mich., doesn’t see steroids
as a major concern for his school, use of other substances has become a
problem.

For instance, he said, creatine has become more popular with his
student athletes over the past few years. A legal supplement that can
be bought in almost any nutrition store, creatine is credited with
helping develop more muscle energy that allows for longer, more intense
training and makes recovery time between workouts shorter.

"When [the substances are] being mixed in school, we have a concern
about it," Mr. Hovrla said. "This is just a shortcut, and that’s
what kids want—shortcuts to get bigger and faster."

Mr. Hovrla’s coaching staff didn’t pay much attention to
creatine in the past, but students caught using it today know
they’ll be punished by having to sit out games.

Deterring Steroid Use

Some experts argued that education is the key to changing
teenagers’ perceptions about steroids and other
performance-enhancing substances.

One popular approach for boys that is used in schools in more than
half of the states is ATLAS, or Athletes Training and Learning to Avoid
Steroids. Over the course of 10 sessions lasting 45 minutes each, a
faculty adviser and peer leaders supervise a number of interactive
activities with a focus on exercise and nutrition as ways of building
up speed, size, and endurance.

The program’s creator, Dr. Linn Goldberg, said he can produce
studies that show ATLAS and a companion course for girls are effective
in decreasing steroid use among participants. The U.S. Department of
Education has agreed, giving the programs its "exemplary" label.

Steroid abuse "is not a problem of morality," said Dr. Goldberg, the
head of the division of health promotion and sports medicine at Oregon
Health and Science University in Portland. "Kids can be deterred from
doing this."

Ground Rules for Posting
We encourage lively debate, but please be respectful of others. Profanity and personal attacks are prohibited. By commenting, you are agreeing to abide by our user agreement.
All comments are public.